Ditch the Smith machine. It sucks and does nothing for CNS force proprioreception. Nothing at all. Doing squats on the Smith is easy cos there's no stabilization of your trunk and core strength required. I can do almost 400 pounds squats on the Smith but have to reduce the weight drastically for freeweight ATG squats on a power rack for 150 kgs. If you do free weight, you'll need to reduce 150kgs by half. Pizzaboy has trained with me before. He knows how hard is it to do freeweight ATG.
Once you do free weight, you'lll see results. I got Pizzaboy to do my leg workout and he almost died but he liked it in the end. Lol.

Still, 150kgs on Smith is not bad, but free weights are the best.

This post has been edited by darklight79: May 19 2006, 12:09 PM

OO....smith gives better stability....
no wonder i cud go a bit more on the squats and end up being less tired.
gotta go without the smith next time.

and i didn't die, i had a buttache for about 3 days through.....

This post has been edited by pizzaboy: May 19 2006, 01:28 PM

Its the company's gym... no power rack. Max i can put on the machine is 130kg and max dumbell is only 17.5kg.... It sucks... but its better than nothing at all

See bro. That's exactly my point. The Smith does the stabilization for you. It does all the balancing for you. And therefore, your gains in muscle won't be optimal. The harder the exercise is; freeweight squats, much better. Anything that requires more stabilization (recruiting more stabilizer muscles) is always better.
Jusat like you'll ask yourself, why are freeweight barbell bench press better than the machine chest press? Why are pull ups better than pulldowns, etc.
Notice in all the fitness centres, the big guys are usually at the free weights section and the smaller fitness fellas are always at the machines section.

And yeah, ATG squats gimme a butt ache too.

Here's a video of how ATG squats should be done. This is my friend Blake from the US.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t38iOC56r8

Oh shit. That sucks. Yeah, i know how you feel. I don't get it, not just your company's gym but with most of th fitness centres. The people who own those places don't realize how important a power rack is.
I switched to a gym where there's one. It's awesome. Try to if you can my friend. Good luck!